The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1887-07-20
ENGLAND AND THE HEATHER.
What British Greed and British Drink Have
Done In Uncivilized Lands.

Done In UEClv1IfZe0 Lands.
New York Tribune.
This is Eneland's jubilee year, but in COM
memorating the giories of the Victorian epoch,
none of her panegvrists have undertaken to
expatate upon the effects Of fifty years of prog
ress" upon her subject Yet when the
balance sheet Is struck by which the true status
of nations is determined there will be
suppression of the hideous facts which to-day ara
smoothly glossed ignored; but the
black and bloody swath moved through score
of uncivilized peoples by the shameless persist
ence of British greed; acting upon the heashens
through British drink, will be laid the
count of the guilty. One voice indeed. that OF
Archdeacon Farrar has lately been raised IN
reproof and admonition. In the late Contem-
porary Review for the current month, under
the caption Africa and the Drink Trade"
he brings together q of damnatory
evidence. He shows what unhappily was
news. that the Same country which
at the beginning of the century made SO noble
self-sacrifice to strike down African slavery,
toward the close of the same century has identi-
fed herself with so-cailed commercial movements
which has already brought conditions worse
than those of slavery to the dark continent, and
which threaten to plunge the entire population
Of that vast area into hopeless ruin and decay.
But England's drink has demoralzed many
peoples besides those OF Africa Wherever the
English traders keel floats or his foot treads the
alcoholic pestilence breaks out There is scarce
island in the great archipelaeoes, in the Ma
lay Papuan, Melanesian. Micronesian groups
where the rum bottle has not made more progress
than the missionary. There is not land con-
quered coIonized by England where English
drink has not debauched native simplicity.
From Australia 20 Calcutta, from Hong Kong
to the Falkland Islands, from Mauritius to Cey-
lon the nation whose sovereign writes herself
Defender of the Fairh." has carried. and taught
the use of the deadlest poison invented by hu-
manity Nor is there in the prosecution of this
internal traffic the faintest pretense Of consider
alton for the destined victims The drink vend-
ed among the heather is the most abomlnable.
the fiercest. most deadly stuff distilled. When
Mauritius became a sugar colony the rum made
there was unfit for expectation to England.
So it was sent to Madagascar; and
when the frightful results in crime and disease
led tho Malagassy King to prohibit the impor
ton, the Mauritius merchants complained, the
English government interfered, and free rum
ner opium was forced upon China at the point
of the bayonet With less effrontery but equal
absence of principle. British liquor has been
pushed through the valley of the Congo. and the
missionaries have been driven to confess that
against this foe they could make no Roadway.
From tine to time inquiries are made to
the rapid decay of the native races brought
into contact with Europeans. Undoubtedly the
chief cause Of this decline is the European drink
traffic. 1t has poisoned the sources of life in
almost every savage habitat. 1t has nullfed
every honest effort to spread Christianity. It
has given the lie to the statements Of the mis-
sionaries. 1t has reinforced every vicious and
demoralizing influence already in existence. Il
las caused the more intelligent heather to reject
the preferred religion of people who. while
praising God with their mouths, worship the
devil with their hands. The awful contrast be-
tween Christian profession and practice was
never so markedly thrown into high relief in
page OF England's progress, and 1t conveys to
the clear-sighted as ominous threat the
luminous message that disordered Belshazzars
feast with its fiery aspect